


Let It Burn

by I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own



Series: I See Red [1]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Owie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 18:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1697801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own/pseuds/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilery spoils for the new movie? Don't read if haven't seen. </p><p>A conversation that could have taken place at any point on the plane or on their joint journey to get to Ravey baby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let It Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Red - Let It Burn

**_I watch the city burn_ **  
**_These dreams like ashes float away_ **  
**_Your voice I never heard_ **  
**_Only silence_ **  
**_Where were you when our hearts were bleeding_ **  
**_Where were you? It all crashed down_ **  
**_Never thought that you'd deceive me_ **  
**_Where are you now?_ **

“You talked a big game, about saving the mutants… no, no, sit, don’t get up, I have a lot to say.” Erik uses the iron in Charles’ blood to keep him seated when the professor tries to rise. “You talked a big game, talked so much about saving the mutants, talked about it so much I believed you. But when push came to shove, you gave us all up so you could walk again. Angel, Banshee, Azazel, Emma. You gave them all up so you could walk.” Erik’s voice grows cold and deadly, Charles blinks away the tears in his eyes.

“I gave them up so I could sleep.” He manages to get the word out this time, with the smallest pop on the p. Erik gives a bitter little laugh.

“Yeah, well, they’re sleeping forever now.” Charles flinches at the statement “If you had your powers, if you’d been using Cerebro, you would’ve known, you would have known I was trying to save the President, you would have known he was a mutant, you would have known someone was picking off your ex-students. If you had been doing your part for our brothers and sisters they wouldn’t have died on some cold metal slabs screaming for mercy! You would have known about Trask long before he became such an issue. If you were… but no. You gave us away so you could walk, so you could sleep, so you could drink yourself into oblivion!” Charles has never seen Erik this angry, not even when he’d been facing against Shaw, not even when he’d spoken of his time in the camps, not even when he spoke of his anger towards the humans.

**_How long can you stand the pain?_ **  
**_How long will you hide your face?_ **  
**_How long will you be afraid?_ **  
**_Are you afraid?_ **  
**_How long will you play this game?_ **  
**_Will you fight or will you walk away?_ **  
**_How long will you let it burn?_ **  
**_Let it burn?_ **  
**_Let it burn?_ **

“And where were you?!” the words force their way up and out of his throat, and he gasps as what feels like cold knives shoot through his heart, and then the pain is gone, and Erik is speaking.

“Rotting in a cell for trying to save a fellow mutant. What about you and Hank? Were you just sitting up there in that mansion? Giggling about how foolish all of us were? How foolish to think you actually cared when you just had to take a serum and suddenly you became part of the human population. Just another face in the crowd.” Erik is not sorry for what he says, he’s not. He’s been sorry for what he did to Charles for long enough. He’s paid for his mistake, paid for his past mistake and any he makes in the future, he’s sure.

“Erik…” Charles’ voice cracks over the name, Erik can’t hide the satisfaction that gives him.

“What am I meant to think, Charles? You gave us away so you could walk.” The bitterness is back.

“I gave you away so I could sleep.” It’s a whisper this time, like Charles’ can barely find the air he needs to breathe, let alone to speak.

“You couldn’t handle our pleas for help anymore, is that it? You couldn’t take it, so you just… you literally just up and walked away. How could… We all have nightmares, Charles, we all lose sleep. Where were you? They stole Angel right out of the sky, we had to watch them rip her wings off. If I hadn’t already watched them silence Banshee I would have thought she was him what with the way she screamed. Raven screamed too, you know, when they came for her.” Charles knows if he could read Erik’s thoughts, they’d be aimed straight at him like an arrow, and Erik’s words the bow.

“Raven.” He whispers the name, a mixture of concern, confusion, guilt, and sadness.

“Yes. They came for her, got off so many rounds but Azazel got her out. He died in her arms in the middle of some God forsaken alleyway on the other side of the country, but that didn’t stop them. They tracked them down, and Raven had to leave his body behind. That’s when she truly became Mystique, you understand.” Charles doesn’t, and Erik knows, pauses just long enough for that to sink in, for the reminder to sting. Erik never needed to read minds to know how Raven worked. “When they ripped away the last person worthy of calling her by her human name.” the sting in Charles’ heart at that is lasting, Erik’s next words do nothing to alleviate it. “She thought you were dead by then too, of course. Came around once to speak with you. Hank told her you were gone, she didn’t understand what that meant at the time, and nor did I. She snuck into the house anyway, but when she found your chair in the study closet and you nowhere to be found… well.” Erik stops to suck in a breath, his eyes clenched shut in pain, as he wills memories away. “And Emma, oh Emma, she projected, you know, projected everything they did to her right up until the moment they tore her heart out to see what would happen. It hurts. And to find you’re still breathing afterwards, because it’s not your heart? Unbearable.” Charles knows, knows because he was in Shaw’s mind when Erik killed him. Charles knows what it is to die and wake up only to face the knowledge that it wasn’t you who died, except somehow that information isn’t a comfort to you anymore than the knowledge that you couldn’t save them.

“Erik.” His voice is low and pleading, but all it does is remind Erik of Banshee when they came for him.

“ _Erik, Erik please… “_

_“Banshee, it’s alright. It’s alright. You’re alright. Breathe. Breathe.”_

_“Erik. Erik. Please, I don’t want to die.”_

_“It’s alright. It’s alright.”_

_“Erik, we have to go.”_

_“I’m not leaving him.”_

_“I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die… I don’t… Please.”_

_“Erik, come on, please, we have to go. Erik, he’s dead. We need to get out of here… Erik. Azazel, grab him!”_

_“No, I’m not leaving him. I’m not leaving him. I’m not… No!”_

Erik gasps in a breath, struggling his way back to the present, but his lungs ache, like they can’t take in enough air, like there’s never going to be enough air in world to satisfy them ever again. He pushes through the pain and stares into Charles’ eyes.

“No, Charles, you made your choice to stand alongside the humans, now you have to face the consequences.” _And if you could read my mind, you’d be dying!_ A voice in Erik’s mind screams for Charles to hear, but Charles can’t, and for that the pain is never-ending.  

“Erik, please.” But Erik won’t be sucked in by that again.

**_I watch the city burn_**  
 **_These passions slowly smouldering_ **  
**_A lesson never learned_ **  
**_Only violence_ **  
**_Is your world just a broken promise?_ **  
**_Is your love just a drop of rain?_ **  
**_Will we all just burn like fire?_**

“I don’t see the world you seem to believe is possible. I don’t… I don’t see it. And Logan, Logan comes from a time where your world never came to be, never had a chance to come to be. And how… how can your world come to be if you turn away when the going gets tough? How can we trust in your love, how can we trust in you when you give us up so you can sleep? So you can drink yourself into an early grave? I don’t understand, Charles, how was that ever meant to help?” Erik is not an idiot, he knows that Charles had given up on them by then, that when he started drinking he’d long since turned from the path.

**_Are you still there?_**  
 **_Tell me now..._ **  
  
**_...can you stand the pain?_ **  
**_How long will you hide your face?_ **  
**_How long will you be afraid?_ **  
**_Are you afraid?_ **  
**_How long will you play this game?_ **  
**_Will you fight or will you walk away?_ **  
**_How long will you let it burn?_ **  
**_Let it burn_ **

“Erik, please.” It’s a sob now, and Charles’ shoulders shake with them, but it does nothing to ease Erik’s mood, in fact it just makes him angrier. It just hardens his heart all the more.

“Stop crying, Charles, you don’t have the right. Stop crying, Charles, you’re not the victim in this situation. Stop crying, Charles, you tuned us out, shut us down, threw us away when we cried for you, when we pleaded for you, when we screamed for you and called for you and prayed for you, you turned your back to us when we needed you the most, so stop crying, Charles, you gave away your right. Stop crying, Charles, you have your life back now. Stop crying, Charles, and go home. This is a war for mutants, and you and Hank no longer qualify.” Charles struggles to breathe through his own sobs and the words like knives that take his breath away.

“Erik.” His voice is a wheezy gasp, his lungs struggling to pull the air in through his distress. But Erik is unfazed, Charles is nothing more than another human now.

“No, Charles, you’re useless without your power, you’re just going to get yourself and everyone else killed. Go. Home. At least you still have one.” The nails in the coffin, and Erik walks away, dropping his hold on Charles, leaving him crying and unable to breathe in Erik’s wake. It is Logan who ventures in to talk Charles through the motions of breathing when Erik is gone.

**_Let it burn._ **


End file.
